Chardonnay 2013

A bright and wildly friendly Chardonnay, this is sure to suit any palate. The light golden straw colored wine looks, smells and tastes youth and all the more exciting for it. The aromatics fill the glass with notes of green apple, peach and minerality. The palate is fresh and fruit forward held together with charming acidity making this wine both simple and exciting.

Vineyard Information:

The Chardonnay that comes from Carter Mountain is a higher elevation site that gets cooler nights preserving acidity and is planted to clones that are about holding acidity and maintaining slightly lower and balanced sugars for better alcohol balance.

Harvest Conditions:

The 2013 vintage will often be remembered as the year that took 5 off the end of every winemaker’s life span. In the end, it all came together with a brilliant harvest time, but leading up was constantly scary. The wines show great vibrancy and finesse with the early ripeners shining like Chardonnay and Merlot. There was some struggle with the later ripeners getting them fully mature.

The season started very late with a very cold and wet spring. We did not see bud break until the start of May which is unheard of. Everyone thought it was a blessing in disguise and that at least we wouldn’t have to worry about frost. We were wrong. We had the latest frost I remember on May 14th and while it did not do tons of damage, it did weaken the vines going into the season. The rest of the summer season we unseasonally wet and cool so we knew we would have trouble ripening the late riperners and had to get all the canopies wide open and drop fruit. In the end dropping fruit came back to bite us as the frost and cold weather forced the vines to start aborting some fruit as well. It also forced the worse animal damage (birds, raccoons, etc.) that we have seen because their nature food sources in the forests were wiped out from the tough year.

The sun came out close to the end of August and stayed through the picking season which was great. It allowed us to be patient and harvest some superb fruit with incredible balance. I the end we quite like what we have from 2013, but the downfall is it is the smallest harvest on record, by far.

Winemaking:

The Boneyard Wines Chardonnay is all about combining an overwhelming demand for unoaked Chardonnay with a vineyard that is suitable for that type of wine. The Carter Mountain vineyard gives stunning minerality and hold beautiful acidity due to its mountain side site and the clones planted. This Chardonnay was treated with ultimate delicacy. Pressed to stainless steel to settle prior to a long and cool fermentation around 52 degrees to preserve its acidity and charming aromatics. Once the wine was done alcoholic fermentation it was put through malo-lactic fermentation and then racked and laid to rest. The wine will be filtered and bottled at the end of February 2014 to preserve all its freshness.

Food Pairing:

This is the perfect Chardonnay for just chilling outside with some friends and family. Maybe spark up the grill and toss on some herb rubbed chicken quarters and serve with the freshest tomatoes you can get in a caprese salad. Fresh living can be so good!